


Out of the Cold

by moo_said_the_cow



Category: Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Historical, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Fake History Porn, Fluff, Kink Meme, M/M, POV Third Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:07:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25892587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moo_said_the_cow/pseuds/moo_said_the_cow
Summary: Alex Rider and Yassen Gregorovich spent years chasing each other in the wilderness of mirrors. Twenty years after the end of the Cold War, a reporter sits down with them to learn their story.Written for the prompt of "Cold War-era, Alex is a spy for MI6, Yassen is a spy for the KGB. Sometimes (or often) they cross paths. Sometimes bullets fly, sometimes sparks do."
Relationships: Yassen Gregorovich/Alex Rider
Comments: 15
Kudos: 59





	Out of the Cold

## Coming out of the Cold

The untold story of two lovers working for opposite sides

July 20, 2010

It has been decades since the Berlin Wall came down, signifying the thawing of the Cold War. Most families divided by the wall were reunited once again. But for Alex Rider and Yassen Gregorovich, once top spies and later infamous lovers, it would be many years before either could make it to their reunion. Now, they live together on an undisclosed island in the Caribbean.

In 1970, Alex Rider was about to graduate from Oxford University with a first in politics and history when a professor reached out to him to talk about joining the Secret Intelligence Service, commonly known as MI6. “I didn’t think twice before accepting the offer,” Alex remarked to me. “He told me that my father had died working for the Special Operations Executive during the Second World War. I was an infant at the time, and I didn’t know anything about him until he mentioned it. Naturally, I was very curious. I wanted to learn more about my father, and at the same time, I wanted to follow in his footsteps.” 

As the only son of wartime heroes who died in combat, Mr Rider was welcomed into the SIS, where he quickly climbed the ranks. Before long, he was posted to the British embassy in Moscow under the guise of a consular officer, a position virtually unheard of for someone his age. “Yassen was a major in the KGB at the time. We met for the first time at a party organized by the Minister of Culture at his dacha outside Moscow. It was all strangely friendly, considering we were enemies,” Mr Rider recalled, a wistful expression on his face.

Not a lot is known about Mr Gregorovich, despite the secrets that poured out from behind the Iron Curtain at the end of the Cold War. What we do know, however, is enough to establish that Mr Rider and Mr Gregorovich’s paths seem destined to intertwine, even before Mr Rider’s birth. The Russian-born Mr Gregorovich was orphaned under unclear circumstances when he was a kid and somehow ended up in Venice, Italy, where Mr Rider’s father was living at the time. He took a young Mr Gregorovich under his wing, providing him with a place to stay and an education that would earmark him for the KGB’s First Directorate, specializing in foreign intelligence.

#### Caught pants down

Based on information obtained under a Freedom of Information request, Mr Rider was working that night, in more ways than one. He was caught later that evening by Mr Gregorovich making a brush pass to a Soviet officer on MI6’s payroll. “Alex Ivanovich looked so much like his father,” Mr Gregorovich remarked, referring to Mr Rider by his Russian patronymic. “His father was a spy, and I suspected he was too. I followed him around that night. I had a suspicion he was there not just to party,” Mr Gregorovich informed me. 

Mr Rider rejected Mr’s Gregorovich’s account of the events. “You only found out my father was a spy years later, when I told you. You were following me around because you had a crush on me.”

Mr Gregorovich responded to Mr Rider’s argument with a raised eyebrow. “You were barely twenty five years old, swimming in your oversized trench coat with your goofy fedora. Even a Russian could not have survived the winter in that. You were either an American gangster or a spy. And since you’re not American…” 

Mr Rider interrupted him with a growl and narrowed eyes. It is clear the two men have had this argument before. 

What happened next could have come out of a B-rated Hollywood movie. Mr Gregorovich pulled a gun on Mr Rider and tried to have him and the agent arrested, but when Mr Rider got down on his knees with his hands in the air, he ended up performing fellatio on Mr Gregorovich. Both him and the agent got away that night, although the agent was arrested a few days later and executed.

#### Houses on fire

Both men were posted by their respective services to Berlin shortly after. “We were very suspicious of that,” Alex recalled. “The good major was certain we’d been made and our services were trying to set us up for something.” Mr Rider and his lawyers — no doubt at Mr Gregorovich’s paranoid behest — would later spend half a decade filing Freedom of Information requests with the British government, searching in vain for any evidence of conspiracy.

Berlin at the time was a city divided. While they were in the same city, Mr Gregorovich resided in East Berlin, trapped behind the wall and Mr Rider in West Berlin, surrounded by the entire East German state. It was under this city where Mr Rider and Mr Gregorovich frequently met, mostly in the ghost stations under East Berlin. The Berlin transit network had been split into two with the city, and some subway lines from West Berlin had stations within the East. These stations were disused while the Berlin Wall stood and became a convenient meeting point for two spies accustomed to danger and risk.

“We met pretty often down there. The sex was great, but the danger we were in made it just that bit better,” Mr Rider confessed, before embarking on a lurid description of the challenges of performing anal intercourse in unheated and grimy environments for this reporter, perhaps meant to convince me of the truth in his account. “Even so, there was never any question about our loyalty. The good major and I never spoke about work, and we certainly did not exchange information that would compromise any of our people.”

According to unsealed court documents from Mr Rider’s later criminal trial, that changed in 1987, on the eve of Ronald Reagan’s visit to Berlin. “It was the stress,” Mr Rider explained, not showing a bit of remorse at the mention of his betrayal. “We were both working twenty hour days, and we hardly got to see each other. We had a number of dead letter drops in the city where I left him little notes, all puns and work-related jokes. Nothing actually sensitive, although some of them probably rubbed my bosses up the wrong way.”

Mr Gregorovich agreed with that sentiment. “Alex Ivanovich was young, impulsive and had a smart mouth back then,” he remarked. “Now he is merely impulsive with a smart mouth.”

Their honeymoon lasted for a mere six months, before Stasi operatives caught the pair in a compromising position in a Stasi-operated tunnel that ran under the Berlin Wall. Stasi reports from the time accuse Mr Rider of shooting at the Stasi operatives before setting fire to the building concealing the tunnel entrance. Mr Rider vehemently denied any involvement in the shooting, although it should be noted that he refused to offer much insight on the cause of the fire, describing it as an “accident”. Whatever really happened that night, it seemed that British intelligence smelled a rat, or at the minimum disapproved of Mr Rider’s pyromaniac tendencies, for Mr Rider was subsequently recalled back to the UK.

#### Wheels within wheels

It was a solitary time for Mr Rider back in London. He had no family to speak of, and living abroad for more than a decade meant that most of his friends from before had moved on without him. Eventually, Mr Rider reached out to the Soviet embassy in London, expressing his desire to be a double agent within MI6, on the condition that Mr Gregorovich would be his handler. The Soviets agreed. Mr Gregorovich was soon reassigned to London himself, and the pair was able to resume their affair. Meanwhile, Mr Rider told his service that he had recruited Mr Gregorovich as a double agent. This enabled them to meet up weekly without suspicion, alternating between MI6 and KGB safehouses, where their post-coital rituals included fabricating reports for the other’s employer. 

Unfortunately for our lovebirds, things came to a head shortly after. The imminent collapse of the Soviet Union led to the birth of the notorious criminal empire Scorpia, who were determined to recruit Mr Gregorovich and Mr Rider both. One of their leaders, Max Grendel, had come across photographic evidence of their illicit affair in Berlin while working for the Stasi, and when the pair declined Scorpia’s initial offer, he used it to blackmail them into joining.

Mr Gregorovich accepted this offer, although he claims it was a reluctant one. “Your readers would not approve of many of the things I have done. Neither would I, but I had very little choice,” his voice is quiet, and his expression inscrutable. “To say no to Scorpia would have meant death, and to lose Alex forever.”

As for Mr Rider, he would be caught up in things beyond his control. His direct supervisor at MI6, Alan Blunt, was about to be promoted to lead a new department within the service, and a security check as part of that process had revealed some irregularities. It emerged that Mr Blunt was aware of Mr Rider and Mr Gregorovich’s affair, and had kept recordings of their safehouse trysts in his personal office safe, on the off chance that it could be used as leverage against the pair. He resigned from the service shortly after.

Mr Rider did not get a choice to jostle with his partner for the position of the world’s best hitman. The investigation into Mr Blunt complete, the internal affairs department at MI6 turned their full focus onto him. Mr Rider eventually stood trial on charges of treason and misappropriating government office supplies for the microfilm he pilfered to write his Berlin letters, where he was acquitted on the former and served eight years in prison for the latter. The judge also reprimanded him for inappropriate office humor relating to the letters, unknowingly siding with Mr Gregorovich on Mr Rider’s "smart mouth”.

#### Into the heat

It is now two years since Mr Rider has been released from prison. Mr Gregorovich retired from Scorpia at the same time, and they have been living together in the Caribbean since. They invited this journalist to visit them at their home for this interview, where Mr Rider was most insistent on offering me a can of Coke. “You’re the first visitor I’ve had the honor of entertaining since the MI6 investigators barged into my office twenty years ago,” he explained, rolling his eyes. “We had so many budget constraints in the service that the best thing I could offer them was this disgusting supermarket brand cola. Naturally, we got off to a really bad start. I’m not at all surprised that the supermarket chain had shut down by the time I was released from prison.”

Mr Rider also claimed that he had no intention of joining Scorpia from the start, arguing that he still had his morals, despite thriving in the shadowy world of intelligence for over two decades. He asserted that he had placed the evidence incriminating himself inside Mr Blunt’s safe. “Alan was a creepy, manipulative boss, and I didn’t want him to prey on anyone else. This way, I got what I wanted, in a sense.” 

Despite Mr Rider’s claim to morals, the quality of life they have achieved during their retirement is only possible with the blood money profits of Mr Gregorovich’s post-KGB employment. Mr Rider had an excuse for me when I enquired about it. “I pay the good major rent every month. On time. And we’re using the money for a good cause. We’re social entrepreneurs now. It’s the most legitimate and meaningful job we’ve ever had.” 

That seems to be true, to an extent. Mr Rider brought the concept of Community Supported Agriculture to this island, where he grows fruit and bands together with neighbors to sell produce boxes. Unfortunately, their business does not seem to be doing as well as they hope. “There’s only a limited number of things that grow in this environment,” Mr Rider explained. “Bananas and pineapples, mostly. I guess you can only make a certain number of plain pineapple pizzas before you get sick of it.”

“Or eat a certain number of bananas before you go bananas,” Mr Gregorovich commented dryly. It is hard to tell if he is upset with his failing investment, especially one he worked hard to get off the ground. Neighbors accuse Mr Gregorovich of intimidating them into joining the CSA, paying them midnight visits armed with fruitcakes and an assault rifle until they agreed. Investigations went nowhere; Mr Gregorovich is also head of the local police force. It is unclear if this was done with Mr Rider’s consent.

Now, the pair have started a new venture, selling DIY rum-making kits on Amazon. They ship raw sugarcane and a barrel to customers, who are expected to ferment and distill sugarcane juice before aging it in a barrel to make rum, a process they admit could years. “Alex Ivanovich has had his fun, yes?” Mr Gregorovich remarked. “It is now my turn. I am a patient man. It is very satisfying to make things slowly from scratch, and I hope our customers will feel the same.”

Sitting here with the elderly Mr Rider and Mr Gregorovich over a dish of pineapple, it is difficult to imagine them as young men fighting for their lives and their countries on opposite sides. Both men look relaxed, perfectly harmless and perfectly in love.

_At the time of this writing, Mr Gregorovich has warrants for his arrest in twenty three countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Russia, Pakistan and India. Alex Rider’s biography, Riding out of the Cold, is published by Penguin ($30)._


End file.
